9780060920074

Affliction

Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.

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Review:

If Russell Banks hadn't become a writer, he thinks he would have wound up stabbed to death in a barroom brawl. He is the son of a two-fisted, drunken New England plumber, and the grief of fatherly combat resonates through his work like the background radiation of the big bang. Banks became a violently drinking plumber himself--and then a Pulitzer Prize-nominated Princeton literary giant and one of the luckiest Oscar-buzzed writers in Hollywood history.

(The Atom Egoyan adaptation of Banks's brilliant novel The Sweet Hereafter perfectly captures its brooding beauty, and Affliction may be Paul Schrader's finest film since he wrote Taxi Driver.)

Affliction transmutes Banks's painful past into fiction. His divorced protagonist, Wade Whitehouse, 41, is imprisoned by fate in Lawford, New Hampshire, a hell frozen over. He digs wells for chump change, lives in a trailer, drinks, and alienates his daughter by dragging her to a miserable Halloween costume party. In two weeks' time, Wade demolishes his pitiable hopes of family happiness, drawn into a rigorously plausible series of disastrous deaths. In flashbacks to his Dad-abused youth, we see how Wade wound up such a Dostoyevskian clown.

Banks has a mind of winter: when Wade sees his dead parent, the scene unfolds with the cold logic of ice-crystal formation. The story is narrated by Wade's kid brother, the family's sole escapee to college, in a cool, distanced way. Both brothers contain aspects of Banks, but each breaks free of autobiography. This is one haunting novel.

From the Back Cover:

"Everything about Affliction is impressive-- [It] will not let go of you, I swear, until you turn the last page." -Elmore Leonard

"With Affliction, Banks has become the most important white male American on the official literary map, a writer we can actually learn from, whose books help and urge us to change." -The Village Voice

"A powerful and often astonishing novel of which it can safely be said that it should be read over and over for many years to come." -The Kitchener-Waterloo Record

Book Description Harper Perennial, 1990. Book Condition: New. Brand New, Unread Copy in Perfect Condition. A+ Customer Service! Summary: Wade Whitehouse is an unlikely protagonist of a tragedy. Wade looms in one's mind as a bluecollar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition, his tale told by his articulate, equally-scarred younger brother. "Part thriller, part psychological study, part indictment of the American way of violence.".--Newsday. Bookseller Inventory # ABE_book_new_0060920076

Book Description HarperCollins Publishers Inc, United States, 1990. Paperback. Book Condition: New. Reprint. 204 x 134 mm. Language: English Brand New Book. Wade Whitehouse is an improbable protagonist for a tragedy. A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one s mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade s story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite. Bookseller Inventory # AAS9780060920074